Imran Khan’s ideation of governance in his victory speech comes as inanity which talks about a shuffling of Medina welfare state with Chinese Socialism. He didn’t get the contradictions, did he?

Chinese authorities in the heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang have imprisoned tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Muslim Chinese in mass internment camps. This detention campaign has swept across Xinjiang in what a US commission on China in 2018 said was "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today".

The internment program aims to rewire the political thinking of detainees, erase their Islamic beliefs and reshape their very identities.

Communist China believes in cultural cleansing. They are up to find the final solution to Muslim radicalisation in the country.

Hold that thought! The Chinese persecution of Muslims which is being reported world over didn’t occur to Imran Khan who in his victory speech after the general elections, tried to coalesce Das Capital with Koran. He proposed to seek inspiration for Pakistan from Prophet Muhammad’s Medina but also learn from China how they brought 700 million people out of poverty.

Imran Khan said, “I want to describe the kind of Pakistan I want to see ... look, my inspiration is the Prophet Muhammad, the city of Medina that he founded, how it was based on humanity. For the first time, the State was formed based on humanitarianism.”

On China, he further continued, “We want to learn from China how they brought 700 million people out of poverty ... The other thing we can learn from China is the measures they have taken against corruption, how they have arrested more than 400 ministers there.”

Marx meets Mohammad

There is a concept called Islamic Socialism. Muslim socialists believe that the teachings of the Quran and Muhammad—especially the zakat—are compatible with principles of economic and social equality.

However, to call it the first State based on Humanitarianism is far stretched. Muhammad has often been criticised outside of the Islamic world for his treatment of the Jewish tribes of Medina. An example is the mass killing of the men of the Banu Qurayza, a Jewish tribe of Medina. The tribe was accused of having engaged in treasonous agreements with the enemies besieging Medina in the Battle of the Trench in 627. Perhaps Imran Khan doesn’t know that humanitarianism doesn’t mean planned persecution of minorities.

There are striking similarities between Muhammad’s Medina State and today’s Pakistan as far as the welfare of minorities is concerned. Hindus in Pakistan are treated as second-class citizens, and many have continued to migrate to India. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan data, just around 1,000 Hindu families fled to India in 2013.

In May 2014, a member of the then ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, revealed in the National Assembly of Pakistan that around 5,000 Hindus are migrating from Pakistan to Bharat every year.

In this regard, Muslims and Marxists are alike. They are highly intolerant towards those who don’t concur to them. History of Communist regimes hitherto is a history of mass execution of the political adversaries. It also includes religious groups and all those whose beliefs didn’t rest in the ‘Church of Communism’.

Muslim minorities in China are meeting the same fate today. Islam in China dates back to the 10th century as the legacy of Arab traders who ventured from the Middle East along the ancient Silk Road. But unlike Bharat, Chinese homogeneity didn’t allow Islam to become a dominant force in the socio-cultural space. The arena of survival for Islam further deflated after the Communism came up in China. Today, namaz is permitted only at state-sanctioned mosques and proselytising in public is illegal.

Therefore, there is a meeting ground for Muslims and Marx which revolves around their natural tilt towards unfreedom and intolerance. However, Socialism with Chinese characteristics is certainly not going to enter Medina without devastating it.

Imran Khan’s ideation of governance in his victory speech pulls off a cricket pitch with Muslims with bat and Marxist China with the ball. What he doesn’t realise that Chinese reverse the swing more aggressively and Muslims’ welfare is going to be bowled out soon!